Poppy never underestimated the restorative power of a cuppa.
After a few sips of the sweet brew Jones was visibly calmer and she was finally able to coax the story out of him, after swearing she would do everything she could to try to keep him out of trouble.
Jones, it seemed, helped register the third-class passengers on the ship’s manifest when they first embarked in Southampton. The shipping company had an agreement with the United States government, for which it received a substantial payment, to weed out potential undesirables at the port of origin. All manifest clerks were given a list of things to look out for that would be likely to prevent a passenger’s admission to the United States, including obvious physical and mental illness or disability. However, some of the clerks occasionally overlooked potential problems and fast-tracked the passenger through. The passenger paid a little extra “assurance fee” so that they would indeed be able to get through Ellis Island.
Poppy was shocked. “But surely you’d know they would be turned away? That they’d have paid all that money for the ticket – and your added fee – only to be sent back when they got here. It might have been all the money they had!” exclaimed Poppy, thinking of the poor third-class passengers she’d seen shuffling up the gangplank in Southampton.
She was glad to see Jones looked cowed. And so he should. However, berating him now would not help her get the whole story out of him, so she took a deep breath and calmed down. Jones waited for her to speak, anxiety written all over his face.
“However,” said Poppy, “I’m sure you did not intend to do any harm. Perhaps you had not really thought through the consequences properly. You probably didn’t know what would happen to them…”
“Exactly!” said Jones, visibly relaxing. “We didn’t know. Besides, it’s hard to tell what the Immigration will do this side. We’re not trained like they are. We’re not doctors or anything. How’s we to know if they’re fit or not?” He looked at Poppy, pleading for understanding.
She nodded, trying to look as sympathetic as she could. “Of course, of course. An impossible situation they put you in. It really wasn’t fair. So,” she said, putting down her cup and saucer, “you took a fee from a young woman called Miriam Yazierska for her sister Esther, who may or may not have been feebleminded.”
Jones nodded. “That’s right. May or may not. I wasn’t sure. I could have sent her away then and there, but that wouldn’t be fair. I thought they deserved a chance to convince the Americans they were fit to enter. So I let them through.”
“For a fee,” said Poppy sharply, before she could stop herself.
“Yes, for a fee,” said Jones and lowered his head.
At least he has the decency to look ashamed, thought Poppy, before pasting the sympathetic smile back on her face.
“Go on, Harry, tell me the rest. What happened on the ship?”
The rest of the tale went pretty much as Poppy suspected it would. Jones had come across one of the sisters – the feebleminded one – and asked if she wanted to see the engine room. “Because she seemed to be interested in how things moved,” he explained.
“Of course,” said Poppy, trying very hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Why else would you be alone with a young woman in an engine room?”
Jones skirted very quickly over the events leading up to him falling into the gears, saying only that the girl “misunderstood something”; that she “got upset” and in the confusion he fell – or perhaps was pushed – into one of the machines. After that he remembered nothing until he woke up here at Bellevue Hospital in New York where the staff were “lovely people” and where he had “no complaints whatsoever”.
Poppy took the now finished tea cup from Jones and put it down beside her own.
“Did you not think of laying a charge against the young woman? If she pushed you into the machine? You could have died!”
Jones lowered his eyes. “I could have, yes, but – well – I didn’t want to get her into trouble.”
Poppy smirked. “That was good of you.”
Before Poppy could say anything further, a nurse came in to change the dressing. Jones looked at the young reporter beseechingly. “What are you going to do now, miss?”
Poppy buttoned her coat and straightened her hat. “I’m going to try to find them, Seaman Jones, and then I’m going to help them. But beyond that…” She paused as the nurse pulled back the covers to reveal the bandaged, bloody stump. “I think, perhaps, you’ve suffered enough.”
Jones looked as if he was about to cry. “Are you all right, Harry?” asked the nurse.
He sniffed. “Yes, nurse, I am. Thanks to Miss Denby, I am.”
Poppy left Seaman Jones’s room not quite knowing what she was going to do with the information he had given her. She genuinely did believe he had suffered enough, but on the other hand, if she didn’t speak up and expose the corruption of the manifest clerk and his colleagues, other poor people might suffer more. She would have to mull it over for a while. She needed to find a way to stop the injustice without getting Jones into more trouble. As a handicapped man, stripped of his livelihood, with no wife to help him, he would need all the support he could get from his employer. But if she named and shamed him, he would be cut loose without any means.
She was pondering this moral dilemma when a voice cut through her thoughts. “Poppy? What are you doing here?”
Poppy turned to see the white-coated figure of Toby Spencer holding a clip chart. He signed something with a flourish and passed it to a nurse. Poppy waited for him to finish, although for a split second she had thought of slipping away while he was distracted.
“I’ve just been to visit Seaman Jones. He’s looking a lot better than the last time I saw him. Would you say he’s on the mend?”
Toby looked over her shoulder to Seaman Jones’s room. “Yes, I would say so. He’ll need a lot of therapy to help him get back to health, but he looks like he’s over the worst of it. With amputations it’s either blood loss or infection that people die of. But he seems to be through that now.”
Poppy nodded. She wondered if Toby knew about how the accident had happened. Or the shipping company. She was curious to find out what story Jones had told, but didn’t want to mention the Yazierska girls to him. She needed to think it all through first. “Terrible accident,” she said instead.
“Yes,” said Toby. “It happens too often though. I’ve seen it in factories as well. Sometimes it’s the worker’s fault for not being careful enough – which is what I think happened here with Jones – but sometimes it’s the employers to blame for making people work long shifts or not having the right safety precautions in place.”
He chuckled and Poppy noticed the fine wrinkle lines around his blue eyes.
“What’s so funny?” asked Poppy as he held her in his gaze.
“Nothing, nothing,” said Toby. “Just that I’m sounding like your socialist friends. My folks would have a cadenza if they heard me talking like that.”
“Oh?” said Poppy. “I thought your parents were in favour of workers’ rights.”
He shook his head. “They’re in favour of a woman’s right to vote – the right sort of woman – but, like many business people, they’re scared of the power of the unions.”
He put his hands on his hips and appraised Poppy. “You really are a remarkable young woman, Poppy Denby. I don’t know any other girls I can talk politics with and know they’ll understand.”
Then you don’t know the right sort of “girls”, thought Poppy, but kept her opinion to herself.
Toby was looking at her earnestly. “I was just due for a break. Would you care to join me? I’m sure I could rustle up a pot of coffee – or tea if you prefer.”
As Poppy had just had a cup, she was going to decline, but she realized Toby was offering more than a beverage. Nothing in his demeanour suggested he was still angry with her about events at The Lodge. Her heart softened. “Yes, that would be lovely, thank you.”
He escorted her to the staff canteen and ordered a pot of tea and some muffins.
“I thought you Americans only drank coffee,” observed Poppy. “Rollo drinks gallons of the stuff.”
Toby chuckled as he placed the tea strainer over Poppy’s cup and poured. “We drink both. The Boston Tea Party didn’t totally eradicate the brew. Lemon or milk?”
“Milk please,” said Poppy. Suddenly she had a flashback to the first time she and Daniel had shared a pot in a tea room in Windsor. She blinked twice to rid herself of the memory, then to change the hair colour of the man in front of her from brown to auburn, and his eyes from grey to blue.
Toby offered her the milk jug. Their fingers brushed against one another. For a moment he did not retract. Neither did she.
“Look, Poppy, I want to apologize for the way I behaved on Saturday. You were perfectly within your rights to question what was going on with that poor girl. And after you left, I did a bit of investigating myself – speaking to some of the guests who were still there and telephoning some of the others. It turns out four – how can I put this tastefully? – four professional girls were indeed brought to the house. They had been ordered…”
Poppy raised her eyebrows.
“Yes, I know it’s an unpleasant word, but I don’t know how else to put it… They were requested by the film producers Miles had invited over. They asked him to – er – provide some ladies for them while they were there. Seems like that’s what they do in Hollywood.”
He opened his hands in apology. “I’m sorry, Poppy. You should never have had to see that. I’ve asked Miles to ensure it never happens again.”
Poppy put down her teaspoon on her saucer and looked at Toby. “One of the girls was assaulted, Toby. Surely a criminal charge should be laid. Did you find out which of the men did it?”
Toby shrugged. “I didn’t, I’m sorry. And none of them – nor anyone else at the party – was called Cameron, first name or surname. I’m afraid unless the girl herself lays a charge – and positively identifies the man in question – I don’t think there’s much we can do.”
Poppy tapped a finger on the edge of the saucer, making a tinkling sound. “Well, for a start we can ask Miles where he ‘ordered’ the girls from and then get him to call again and ask for Mimi.”
“Mimi?” asked Toby, his head cocking to one side.
“Yes, Mimi. She told me her name.” She decided not to mention the surname just yet.
“Could just be a stage name,” observed Toby.
Poppy nodded. “It could. But we could ask to see the girl who calls herself Mimi. And then describe her. Curly black bobbed hair. Probably Jewish. Ukrainian…”
“Ukrainian? How do you know that?”
Poppy shrugged. “The accent.”
“That’s very specific,” Toby observed. “Most people would just have said Russian.”
Poppy shrugged again. “I have a good ear for accents.” She picked up her cup and took a sip of the tea, looking at Toby over the brim and hoping he had bought her explanation for how she knew Mimi was from the Ukraine. She didn’t want him to know she’d been doing investigations of her own. She needed him to think he was in control of this. Helping her. Making up for his failings on Saturday. “So,” she said, “do you think you can ask Miles to follow it up?” She held her breath. This would be a test for Toby. If he agreed, she could dismiss the nagging doubts that he was somehow involved in all this. And that would be an immense relief. But if he didn’t…
“Yes, I can do that,” smiled Toby and took another sip of his tea.
Ten minutes later Toby was called away to see a patient. He had asked Poppy if he could take her out to dinner on Wednesday night. She had readily agreed. Her heart was warm and there was a spring in her step as she left the hospital. She said goodbye to the receptionist, who smiled at her knowingly and waved. “Oh, Miz Denby,” the woman said as an afterthought. “Sorry I was called away earlier. You asked who else had visited Seaman Jones. It was Mrs Amelia Spencer, Dr Spencer’s mother. She came on Saturday, I think. She said she wanted to see the man her son had saved. She’s a lovely lady, so gracious. Have you met her?”
Poppy absorbed the information, tucking it away for future reference. “Yes, I have,” she said. “And I agree; she’s very gracious. Very gracious indeed.”